Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet

Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
VILSELEDNING GENOM HUMOR PÅ TIKTOK: En kvalitativ studie om desinformation som humor på TikTok
Umeå University, Faculty of Arts, Department of culture and media studies.
Umeå University, Faculty of Arts, Department of culture and media studies.
2025 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesisAlternative title
Deception Through Humor on TikTok : A Qualitative Study of Disinformation as Humor on TikTok (English)
Abstract [en]

The study aims to analyze how humor is used to spread disinformation in TikTok videos. Thesocial media app, TikTok, has become a significant source of information among young adults, while at the same time, disinformation has become a growing problem on social media. Due to TikTok's playful complexity, it becomes challenging for the platform to balance humorous expressions in content moderation. Due to the growing problem of disinformation and TikTok's difficulties in moderating humor, this thesis aims to shed light on the role of humor in disinformation videos on TikTok through three case studies. The cases studied are “The pope and Trump”, “Birds Aren’t Real” and “Europeans don’t drink water”, for each case, we have analyzed four videos along with their associated comments. The method used in this study is digital ethnography with observations forming the primary data. We analyzed our study through a thematic analysis with three different themes, these are (1) Satire and humor as tools for disinformation, (2) Media users' reactions and engagement and (3) Distribution and TikTok's features. The theoretical framework is based on Stuarts Halls theory encoding/decoding (1980) and José van Dijck and Thomas Poells theory social media Logic (2013). The analysis reveals how humor is a central tool in the distribution of disinformation on TikTok, as observed in the cases “The Pope and Trump, “Birds Aren’t Real” and “Europeans don’t drink water”. Humor, audio memes and exaggerated content are key elements to strengthen the message and contribute to the virality of these videos. TikToks technical features, such as stitching and duetting, allow users to interact with and spread disinformation, playing a significant role in the platform’s information flow. Additionally, the use of hashtags enables users to distribute content to a wider audience. We have also observed that users play a vital role in the distribution of disinformation. How a video is encoded and decoded is essential for understating how disinformation takes part in the information flow on TikTok. In conclusion, humor plays a significant role in how disinformation spreads, at the same time users play a crucial role in determining the contents truthfulness and further virality. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 52
Keywords [en]
Humor, TikTok, Affordances, Disinformation, Content moderation
National Category
Media and Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-237842OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-237842DiVA, id: diva2:1953533
Educational program
Programme in Media and Communication Studies: Strategic Communication
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2025-04-22 Created: 2025-04-22 Last updated: 2025-04-22Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(5053 kB)27 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 5053 kBChecksum SHA-512
1f7e438c20ca748c800485ca58d4040c87deb8e8c53cb0ac52cbe675e4c760ebdb2035d03923d8730338d1452f80f556df88b0f564c18f42de5cc28808765040
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Rönnlund, HeddaDunér, Stella
By organisation
Department of culture and media studies
Media and Communication Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 27 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 192 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf